A Taste of Prohibition as Liquor Stores Go Private

This rural corner of central Washington might find out.

A change in the state’s 78-year-old sales system for liquor, from state-controlled stores to private retailers — approved by voters last fall and now in the home stretch of a chaotic, deadline-driven start on Friday, the first day of June — is pushing some places toward a palate-parching glimpse of Prohibition.

Consider this eye-opener: Of the six liquor outlets in Chelan County, about 150 miles east of Seattle, one closed earlier last week for inventory checks in anticipation of the state handoff and three others, including the only one here in Cashmere, population 3,063, will close on Monday.

For the three days after that, the closest bottle for many people in a county of 72,000 could be half an hour or more away, assuming anything is left. Retailers were anticipating a run.

“We’re going dry,” said Stacey Hoefner, the owner of the Cashmere store, formally known on state rosters as store No. CLS540.

Ms. Hoefner said she had been unable to place any new liquor orders since mid-May. And with people driving in for miles around in recent days to buy by the case — as insurance against shortages or price increases — and the summer camping and festival season in the towns of the Cascade Range beginning in earnest this weekend, some shelves were already bare.

Popular midpriced vodkas and tequilas? Entirely gone. “I’m doubling up on the Baileys Irish Cream shelf to make it look full,” Ms. Hoefner said.

The shortage is temporary. At midnight on June 1, the alcohol spigot will be turned back on with a jolt as retailers that were long barred from the liquor trade, including large grocery stores, will be allowed to stock their shelves with higher-proof beverages, and state-owned stores that were sold at auction turn their lights back on under new ownership. Wine and beer sales were unaffected by the change, called Initiative 1183, and are already allowed to be sold in most shops.

But for three days this week, the system in transition will be shaken and stirred, with all but 35 of the state’s 331 liquor stores, which serve a population of 6.8 million, going dark.

“I imagine there will be places where people will have a drive,” said Mikhail Carpenter, a spokesman for the Washington State Liquor Control Board. “There was an aggressive schedule for us to be out of the liquor business,” he added. “It comes down to a question of manpower and scheduling.”

Washington is one of eight states left, at least for the moment, with a state-run monopoly on retail liquor sales, according to federal figures. In the aftermath of Prohibition — the 18th Amendment to the Constitution, repealed in 1933 after 13 years of bathtub gin and gangland lawlessness — most states immediately or gradually transitioned to the private market, or a state-private mix, and never looked back.

But here in Washington, historians say, a utopian if not quite bluenosed spirit — prominent in the early wave of pioneer settlement and still present today — kept a hint of the temperance spirit alive.

State stores were clean but never very plentiful, and almost entirely free of charm: a sign out front declared in unadorned block type what was available within. The system made Washington State second only to Utah, where the Mormon faith frowns on drinking, in having the fewest liquor outlets per capita, according to Washington State figures.

State control, in turn, made generations of civil servants tastemaking critics — their decisions on what to stock dictating what people could order in bars or buy in the stores.

In 2010, for example, a tiny distiller here in Cashmere, called It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere, made a grape brandy that the owner, Colin Levi, was quite proud of. Liquor Control Board officials came by for a tasting and did not much care for it, Mr. Levi said, and that was that — it never went into distribution.

Mr. Levi said he was expecting greater exposure in the private market, especially in light of the so-called locavore movement — eating and drinking products produced close to home — which is very popular in the Pacific Northwest.

The end of state liquor distribution will also mean that Mr. Levi’s brandy can travel the four blocks or so across Cashmere, directly to Ms. Hoefner’s place. Under the state system, every bottle was shipped to a warehouse in Seattle before going back out to stores or bars, even if the final destination was just down the street.

There will be pain. Mr. Carpenter, the Liquor Control Board spokesman, said he would be among the more than 1,000 state employees, in a department of about 1,300, who will lose their jobs when the privatization is completed. Some could get jobs with the new privately owned stores, he said, but no figures were available yet.

Many Washingtonians call 1183 the “Costco Initiative” for the big national retail chain — whose headquarters are near Seattle — that aggressively pushed for its passage. Costco and allies argued that the plan would generate $400 million or more in state and local revenues over the next six years through lower costs and new licensing fees on retail sales — sorely welcome cash in a state that, like most others, is still struggling financially.

And while some shoppers said they thought competition would be good for choice and price, others said they feared that big business could swamp the little stores that had flourished under a state monopoly, whatever its flaws.

“I love Costco, but I won’t buy alcohol there,” said Judy Martin, who drove 20 miles to Cashmere on Thursday to buy a bottle of Crown Royal.

Either way, liquor stores in Washington are going to be different. Ms. Hoefner said that CLS540 will become Old Mission Spirits this summer, with a big new sign out front.